Years ago as a student at Word of Life Bible Institute, I learned to sing the WOL theme song, complete with actions. It is a real RA! RA! kind of song and was sung every week at the big Presidental Chapel and at just about every other special event.
Another phenomena that I noticed was that a lot of the staff and visiting WOL missionaries met their wives at WOL.. this was before I suspected that I had done the same thing.
I heard rumours that there was a variation of the Holding Forth the Word of Life song that was about an ugly wife. Unable to find this alternate version, I decided to write my own.
| The original version:
Holding forth the Word of Life, We must conquer, we’ll not fail. So pressing on with one accord, |
My version:
Holding forth my ugly wife, She can’t cook a single meal, So pressing on in disaccord, |
The first public performance of this song was during one of these chapels. I was only a couple rows behind the Director of WOL International and the other top guys in the front row. Ironically, I was also standing next to the rather beautiful Naomi at the time. There was about six hundred people there, so my version was not heard by many, but Naomi heard it. After a minute she stopped singing the authorized version to turn and stare at me, her jaw slightly open. I don’t know if it was because of my lack of singing ability or the words I was singing. She married me anyway.
My brother-in-law knew about this song, so when the wedding came around, he arranged for us to sing my version with a mens choir. So yes, I sang Holding Forth My Ugly Wife at my own wedding reception.
Obviously, the song is quite inaccurate.